Red Road Rey
by fargdingo
Summary: Red Road Rey is a lone scavenger and mechanic who is trapped on the no-nonsense planet of Jakku by her delusion that one day her parents will come and get her. There are many ways out - she doesn't take them.
1. Chapter 1 - Ignition

**RED ROAD REY**

**Chapter 1 - Ignition**

In the great deserts of Jakku, scattered are the old imperial cruisers from battles fought against the rebel forces. Scavengers have claimed these ships for scrapping, carving their way through, bit by bit. It is seemingly a treasure trove of miscellaneous parts to sell for use in smaller, more practical ships – but it is not that simple. First, there's a scale problem. Although the ships have a lot of useful components hidden in their construction, knowing which components are valuable and where they can be found can be a bit of a hassle. Second, the axis. These ships did not land well on their bellies. Giant cargo holds and hangars are now tilted to become dangerous pitfalls likely to swallow a janky-stepped scavenger never to be heard of again. Even if they manage to land or climb down safely, the odds of a sand avalanche burying them are just as high as the coveted component being missing or unusable.

Finally, there's people like Blobfish. The people who act as middlemen between scavengers and spacers buying the parts. They control the only access of food and water around the scavenging sites, as such the only pay scavengers get is just food and water. Even if the scavengers tried to go past these people, the merchants would send enforcers to put them back in their place. For this reason, over time the scavengers have become more akin to slaves than freelancers, with no hope of accumulating enough wealth to gain passage off Jakku.

There's one way to get off the planet, though, as Blobfish well knows. Piss off the wrong people. Years ago, when he was just starting up, a young family came to him for help. The parents promised to work for him if he made sure their daughter got taken care of. They were the first people he tried his food-for-work scheme on, the scheme that put him into his current position. And the girl, why that's another worker. Teach her what to look for, and she can crawl into the tightest of spaces to get it for you. The parents, though, were soon apprehended by unmarked soldiers. Must've been fugitives. But the girl, Rey, was a gift. Blobfish wasn't exactly comfortable scrounging around in the dry heat of the desert, so he preferred to delegate his business from a nice shady booth where humidifiers worked around the clock to keep him nice and moist. Rey ended up bringing in a reliable haul, so these days he rarely needed to leave his luxurious shack to get his own hands dirty.

Blobfish knew that this couldn't last forever. Back when Rey's parents were taken, he had told her that they'd come back for them, a simple lie to calm a child down. But Rey had taken that to heart and kept believing it, even after 15 years. A couple of years back he had attempted to break her the truth, that her parents had probably been executed or indefinitely employed as prison labor, but still she held onto this one hope she had. All this did was sour their relationship. Rey sought every opportunity to displease her caretaker, while the caretaker kept being that only insomuch as he was for any other scavenger bringing in scraps of technology to get at the scraps of food stocked in his shack.

And the market wasn't great. Food was mostly carted in from off-world, and the carter had called in to say he'd be two weeks late. Only a little came from a village two-and-a-half days west, but that shipment was three weeks coming. Blobfish had talked some spacers into getting a new shipment in, but their schedules were hectic, not to mention they had asked for some free parts in advance – might've just cut and run.

"Here you go!" Blobfish flashed his mud green teeth at Rey, handing her a vacuum-sealed packet.

"This is a half-portion! Drag modulators are worth two portions. I know it, last month you gave me three for two, and those were missing faucet knobs!"

"Faucet knobs... oh, my dear force!" Blobfish threw his hands up, his rolling eyes only stopped by a leaky humidifier. Rey wasn't easy to fool, but she never took anything as a joke. "Where's this modulator's faucet knob, if I may ask?"

"It's this thing here, right?"

"Wrong, this is a drainer cell. Old models used them to store extra drag energy, but they have to be manually switched every time they reach capacity. Faucet knobs hook up to automated systems, far more popular these days."

Rey called his bluff. "Give it back then, I'll make it interface with automation. I'll test it on the Red Stripe, it should have a-"

"No, wait, listen. I'll give you two portions for it." Rey looked more confused than relieved. "But it comes with a condition."

"Alright, I'm listening."

"You take Red Stripe, go out west to the village and see if you can figure out why they're late on their shipment. I'll give you six portions for the journey, two for the drag modulator and an extra ten when you get back."

"And I get to keep the speeder."

Blobfish hesitated. He could send someone else for only the food. Deadbeat Koa would do it for half, and he had his own ride. But is he worth trusting? Rey hated him, but so did everybody else. She was just more honest. "You get the speeder." Blobfish sunk to his chair and started rummaging for rations.

"And keep the two portions, I'll put the modulator to use." She still wanted her victory.

Blobfish tossed it over, and dragged six portions on the counter. "I haven't heard word from them in six weeks. Might be they got eaten by worms, or a bad storm wiped them off the map – remember that one time we were buried in sand? – might be that they decided I was gouging them for price. I'll raise it by threefold if I have to, but I know you can talk them down to two. But if they're gone..." He shrugged. "Just make sure you have the right spot."

Rey took it all in intently like she had so many of Blobfish's lectures. Catching herself, she shoved the loot into her bag, reached for Red Stripe's magnetic activator below the counter, and let out a hurried 'later' before scuffling off to the yard.

Blobfish's booth acted as a guardhouse to his scrapyard, with cliffs on either side opening up to a large field filled with spaceships, speeders and piles and piles of junk. Built onto one of the cliffs was a giant crane for getting spacecraft in – or on the rare occasion they got one fixed, getting them out. Its looming shadow reminded Rey of big man Oak whom Blobfish hired when he needed to talk to his competitors.

The crane wouldn't be needed for speeders like Red Stripe. The yard had another entrance on the back, hidden to the market side and to anyone flying over, and it was just big enough for lighter vehicles to pass through. Blobfish had said his old business partner had driven one of the imperial fighter planes into the side of the canyon, tunneling his way through. Rey had no reason not to believe that story, there was even marks of a cave-in and a wreckage, but she had heard so many stories with half-truths in them that they just didn't seem reliable anymore.

The wreckage was long stripped from usable parts, and many were used in Red Stripe that sat right by it. This was a speeder Rey and Blobfish had built together, using a hodgepodge of parts from this and that vehicle. It was her first real project, and it turned out really bad. Red Stripe would be too heavy to gain lift, it had parts that would fall off when it gained any speed, and it looked like a tray of trash. Over time, Rey deconstructed and reconstructed Red Stripe so many times she knew every inch of it. She made it leaner, filed down parts to fit them together, covered them with panels so they didn't even have a chance to fall off. She bound wires together to fit them in the frame, threw out useless components, moved the battery to the back. Many things she did were a process of trial and error, but the final product was actually pretty decent. And then she finished it off with a paintjob, giving it a fat red stripe along the sides. Blobfish gave it the unfortunate name after that and she didn't know how to protest. He also started renting it out to spacers who wanted to see the area or take a joyride. Rey often thought of taking it back, but she knew she'd have to leave the market for good. And where would she go with it? Jakku had other places for scavengers, but her parents left her here. And Blobfish wasn't maybe that bad, he at least used his influence to keep others off her back on scavenging runs.

Drag modulators communicated between a speeder's gyro system and the control board. Red Stripe had a simple OGT modulator that just passed on the info, while a drag modulator had extra sensors for air drag, an aggregation chip and a faucet knob that harvested the energy generated by the sensors and sent it into the system. Well, this one had a drainer cell. Rey opened the hood, looked at the OGT, she looked at the drag modulator. There was no way it would fit. And the sensors had to go up through the hood or around to the side with extenders. Too much of a headache, she decided. Slam!

Rey had really no trouble navigating to the village. Red Stripe had a compass. Sunsets were straight to the west. And to the north, in the sky, the remains of a space battle. Although some star destroyers had rained down to Jakku, many of them were left in orbit. They were in a giant mess cluster, looming over the northern pole of Jakku like a messy moon. Scavenger runs to the battleship moon were rare and never successful. Blobfish had said it was something about the electromagnetic antigravity field it was generating, although he couldn't guess how it worked.

And there it was, two days later. A plateaued mountain in the distance, a wide and shallow river snaking through the savannah. This was the closest place to the market anyone not scavenging would wish to reside in. Just one distance away, just follow the river upstream. Just a little more to go.

The ashes disturbed and pushed up into a swirl burned her skin, so she lifted her bandana up to her goggles.


	2. Chapter 2 - Caution

**Chapter 2 – Caution**

Wreckages were scattered all across the desert, but the market Blobfish had set up was mainly concerned with the three big ones – two star destroyers and a battlecruiser conveniently within a day's travel of each other. The market had great access to all of them, so you could leave and make it back within the same day. The first destroyer was called the Whale. It had landed relatively evenly and was easy to get around in. Over time, bit by bit, it had been carved out by the scavengers, leaving it mostly open to the elements and poorer in valuable finds. The other one was called the Dragon for its hoard of wealth trapped behind countless dangers. This one had landed sideways and sunk into the dunes, making it impossible to move with even a squad of regular transport ships. For scavengers, it was a disorienting nightmare that required serious climbing gear to get anything out of. Some had tried jetpacks, but the Dragon's Breath – constant strong drafts through the ships caverns – had carried them off to oblivion.

The battlecruiser was nicknamed the Hedgehog for its plethora of gun turrets sticking out of its body. Apart from the engine department and the personnel quarters this ship was all about weapon systems. Coming in from the outside you got the cannons, the maintenance tunnels, and the targeting system rooms with lots of electronics, below that there were either loading bays or generators or both. Those were connected to the cargo bay by a labyrinth of corridors and shafts. Finally, the crew area was just packed with tiny double-bunk-bed-rooms that mostly were useless for a scavenger from the business perspective, but were a great way to find some entertainment by the way of personal affects like holotapes. There were some merchants who took holotapes as novelty goods or for repurposing, but Blobfish in particular thought they were a waste of time and effort unless they contained valuable information, which most likely they didn't.

Hedgehog's big problem was the way it had sunk. It had taken damage to its engine shielding and took a direct hit to the cooler units, the overheating failsafe was designed to divert engine power into shields automatically, but those had lost capacity and overloaded, causing a surge of electricity to travel into the body of the ship. A cargo bay got hit by the surge and some unprotected ammunition detonated, causing a chain reaction to blow the whole bay up. Many of the rear loading docks were affected as well, but only partly, which meant that in the wreckage there was a very realistic chance to have another accident have the whole thing light up like a match. The front of the ship was safer, but it had burned up and melted in the atmosphere, and the landing impact had destroyed most useful salvage. The usable and safe had long been claimed by Blobfish and his former partner, so these days scavengers were left with either stomping around in volatile environments or pocketing a few holotapes for their own enjoyment.

A reminder of the Hedgehog was just above the scrapyard, placed opposite of the crane. It was a repurposed anti-aircraft cannon that Blobfish used to scare off hostile competitors. The cannon was coupled with a radar tower, 'manned' by a disassembled droid reprogrammed for just this purpose. Blobfish had hired a hacker to deal with the droid installation, and the hacker, Darrin, stayed on as a maintenance-and-maybe-shooty-guy, building himself a shack just beside the cannon. Darrin spent most of his time doing cracking jobs for visiting spacers, but he used to go all over the galaxy to do more hands-on jobs. He had told Rey he had twice as many enemies as Blobfish, so he preferred staying within reach of a fuck-off gun to going back to his risk-laden past life.

Half a year – a full year? – back, Darrin called out to Rey as she was working on her scavenger craft that was just the opposite of Red Stripe in terms of speed. This one was designed to haul big loads at the pace of a snail, the Snail. That was what Blobfish called it, Rey referred to it as a hunk of junk. This one Rey had built by herself with the blessing of Blobfish, and with a promise it'd be hers no matter how many parts from the yard she had to use. Of course, she still had to ask for permission for the components, so they ended up being less than ideal in terms of quality. But she brought in her own parts from her scavenging runs, and the Snail came in useful for that. She could get parts to upgrade it, and have some left over to sell. It also featured a makeshift living space and a roof to block the sun, so it was actually quite a nice home on the road.

"Hey, Rey! Hey! Come up here!"

"What?"

"You have to come up here first! I'll throw down the ladder!" Darrin pushed a massive roll over the cliffside, unfurling it right down to where the Snail reached. Rey put down her wrench and hopped to catch the swinging rope ladder, trying to stabilize it so she wouldn't get swung right into the rocks. When she made it up, Darrin's bright red face – she wasn't quite sure if it was a permanent sunburn or just his look – greeted her with a wide smile. "Hey, Rey! I got a big, well-paying job from some off-worlders."

"…congratulations? What's that got to do with me?"

"Well, it's not particularly in my wheelhouse, it's just something my associates approached me with. You see, they came here with a deactivated droid brain and asked me to access its memory banks, and at first it looked like an easy one – it had PP1 encryption, child's play – but it turned out that was just the decoy layer and the actual bank was only accessible by physical manipulation, but the mechanical parts of the droid had ceased function so I had to create a manual simulation of that, and I thought that was way out of my wheelhouse at the time, but it's actually quite similar to what you do in scripting in its principles. So I employ those skills and add a dexterity factor to it and – bam! – I get to the memory banks and they have all this information on maintenance routines, real interesting stuff since what I do here is basically maintenance, basically when you handle…"

Rey fell into a trance listening to Darrin go over every single thread of thought he had had over his last job, but after a while he stopped talking and it seemed as if he had asked her a question. What it could have been, she had no idea, but she answered anyway: "Yeah, that's good."

"Well, great! Then you're in. They're by the AA right now, I'll introduce you." Darrin led Rey to the anti-air cannon menacingly pointed at the northern moon away from the scrapyard. The two clients were standing by its rotary platform in heated discussion, pointing at the cannon's many modifications Blobfish and Darrin had made to fit its new purpose. "Hey! I got her, this is Rey."

Both figures turned to them, one of them being incredibly short and the other unusually tall, both wrapped in layers of clothing, poorly concealing their protective suits. The shorter creature introduced himself as Kent in a low croaking voice filtered through a voice equalizer. The taller one held a remote translator that identified him as 'Egg Salad', Kent corrected it to Eg'saléd, although Rey could barely tell the difference.

"So then, what is this job Darrin keeps telling me about?"

Eg'saléd's translator crackled in a robotic voice: IN THE FAR CORNER OF THE DESERT I FOUND REMAINS OF ASH. ("He means we found a wreckage," Kent corrected) YOU ARE OUR SUPPLIER AND OUR EXTRACTOR. ("Get us in and out.") YOU DO US A FAVOR. YOU GET PAID TEN MEGA CREDITS.

"They say it's the same class of cruiser as Hedgehog. It broke off the moon and crashed way out in the desert, south west of the Whale. Then I said that I know this one scavenger that goes to Hedgehog all the time, she know her way around, you know, and can lead them to what they need to get out of it, and they said it needs to be hush-hush, can't tell the boss, so I said that you're cool, you can deal with them directly."

"I can do it, do you have your own ship?"

WE DON'T BOARD THE BOAT. TOO MUCH SNOW TO SEE. Eg'saléd turned some knobs on the translator. DELIVER THE CARGO. HIDE US FROM THE BOSS. ("We'll hide on your transport.")

"Do you have supplies? How far is it?"

WE ARE SUPPLIED. A FLAG AT THE FINISH SPEED FOR FIVE DAYS.

"Give me half an hour. I'll meet you by the holotape stands. Bring only essential luggage or we'll be left on the dunes. I have enough water, so don't worry about that."

Rey returned to the yard and closed off Snail's innards. All her stuff was on the barge, so she stashed some of it away between the cavities of a nearby machine so well ravaged its initial purpose was unidentifiable. She raised a flag indicating to Blobfish she'd be out and about for a while and started the hunk of junk up. There was a moment in which it seemed it wouldn't start, but that was standard as far as Snail went. With clanking protest, it rolled out of the scrapyard, around the canyon and behind where the holotape stands were. Kent and Egg Salad were browsing when she waved them over.

I LIKE PEOPLE DOING EVERYTHING WITH BARE HANDS. Egg showed Rey a holotape he had bought.

"I brought a laser cutter. We'll need it to get to the good stuff." The creature shook his translator and mimicked throwing it away.

"He was just trying to be friendly," Kent croaked dismissively.

"I'm trying to be professional. I don't have a holotape player on board."

Kent pointed at a pile of suitcases. "We brought one. We brought design tapes for the cruiser, and a guide droid. Just the brain, mind you."

WE FIND WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR EFFECTIVELY. HELP US MAKE PAYMENTS. Another angry pause. I NEED NEW TOOLS. HELP US CARRY THE LUGGAGE.

Red Stripe flew through miles of ashes before reaching the main village. Small dwellings were scattered all along the river, half covered in white acidic ash and all scarred by plasma charges. Not only did a plasma charge cause molecular disassociation, it also left behind a nasty residue that would be toxic to the touch and was hard to clean off without the correct neutralizer. So the residents were either captured or they left just because they couldn't live in their homes anymore. Whoever dealt the attack was certainly thorough. And they had plasma weapons, which were very rare due to their inefficiency compared to laser alternatives. Not to mention, they were dangerous to handle since the chemicals used for fuel were a nightmare when they leaked. Blobfish or his gang wouldn't touch plasma, but Rey knew a couple of people who would.

The main cluster of buildings, the village proper so to speak, was a nightmare to look at. It was all piled up on an orderly heap in the center square, covered in white ash. She left the speeder and approached, taking slow and steady steps. The ash was covering a huge pile of bones, the top ones charred, the bottom ones melted and fused together. All these people had been killed, brought here and burned haphazardly, not even down to ashes, but they were covered in ashes from all around, ashes from the burnt-down buildings and the ruined fields. This village had been exterminated. Rey didn't know what else to do but run back to Red Stripe to turn around and flee.

And that she did.


	3. Chapter 3 - Restless

**Chapter 3 – Restless**

Most scavengers on Jakku worked in loose bands of up to five members. Loners like Rey had mostly died out, some because of getting into accidents with nobody there to help them, and some because of loose bands of up to five members creating those accidents. Some disputes were over loot, others over buyer's rights, the cruelest ones were just for sport. Joining a group didn't always end up that well either – more opportunities to rub someone the wrong way. Blobfish took advantage of this culture by arranging disputes that would advantage his business, eventually giving him control over the market. Rumors had it even his business partner had gotten in his way, and that Blobfish made sure nobody even spoke his name in public.

The Whale had long been stripped of more portable salvage, so scavengers started cutting it up into pieces. This involved larger machines and co-ordination, but the crews stayed the same size either because of greed or paranoia. Whalers was a group of four that decided to live on the Whale, dedicating their time carving it up while another group, Pogo Boys, went back and forth making their deliveries. Normally, Blobfish would've broken this alliance up in fear of a rival gang rising up against him, but since they only dealt with him the reward was worth the risk.

Snail had crawled over endless dunes throughout the day to finally arrive at the Whale. Rey hailed the Whalers and announced that she'd stay the night in the docking bay. The Whalers invited her over, but she refused. Her passengers remained hidden for this interaction, luckily the carving crew had set themselves up on a higher floor to watch out for approaching vehicles, but they had nobody down on the ground to inspect the Snail.

When they got into the hangar bay, Eg'saléd started fiddling with his translator, but Rey stopped him. "It's too loud. If they find you out, your wreckage will be public knowledge by the time we get there." A lone scavenger like Rey scouting for new finds wasn't all that uncommon. A scavenger with foreign friends was on their way to something. "Even my whisper might make them suspicious."

Eg'saléd put his device away and started rummaging around for food. Rey took a swig and passed him the water bottle. Egg pulled his bundle of scarves over his head, they dropped on a sleeping Kent, and he screwed open the protective suit's helmet, revealing a creature Rey never had seen the likes of. He had no neck, or rather his entire head was his neck and it just stopped at two pointy protrusions with eye sockets, or rather the sockets _were_ the eyes, covered in hexagonal dark plates. Instead of ears or on top of them Egg had cybernetic modules grafted onto the sides of his neck-head, instead of a nose there were gill-like organs. Rey also realized why he needed the translator even though he understood the common tongue. Egg's mouth was pointed upward and it simply opened and closed, and the noises he made were hissy and incompatible with common speech. From the suit came two microphones pressed into the lower part of his neck, presumably catching all the nuances of the only language he could speak.

Egg took out a long soft-looking roll and slid it into his mouth hole, followed by the entire remainder of the water. Rey gnawed on a ration and recalculated the amount of water they needed for the trip. As she was debating whether to ask the Whalers for help or not, there was a commotion outside. Sounds of vehicles and shouting. Rey moved quickly to the control panel and pulled the ignition lever.

"They'll come here. We have to go further in, or get out. Which one?" Egg shook Kent awake and started fiddling with his translator. Rey repeated herself, "We have to move, hide further in or get out right away?"

Kent looked towards the big entrance to the hangar bay, the engine sounds and the shouting coming from just around the corner. "Hide. We hide, wait it out." Kent's croaks were meek and his body trembling, Egg put his arm around him and nodded, looking at Rey.

The Snail crawled across the hangar bay making way more noise and a lot less progress than what Rey would've liked. By the time they made it to the maintenance area, which was gated off from the rest of the bay, the newcomers were already moving their wide roamer through the entrance. They had been spotted, and the Whalers could have mentioned her being here, but Rey hoped they would think she was being unsociable and not secretive.

What made Rey really uneasy was that this wasn't the usual vehicle the Pogo Boys used for transport. This was an unknown machine, with two wide tracks and a large storage compartment. It was something from a different market or perhaps a freshly acquired import. That did make sense, since the Whalers had stockpiled large-scale salvage that the Pogo Boys couldn't hope to drag off. And their numbers. There weren't four or five of them, Rey counted eight and maybe there were more. Rey sighed as it seemed that, at least for the time being, they were going to leave Snail alone. They started pulling out camping gear and one of them started up a song. Soon they were drinking, singing and dancing, completely off in their own world. Kent and Egg, who had been alert as well, slowly retreated into a slumber. Rey didn't calm down just yet, she was gripping a shocker stick that she used to test individual systems when diagnosing them for faults. It was no blaster, but she hoped there was no need for one.

As the party outside died down, Rey relaxed a little. The group hadn't done as much as glance at the maintenance area, they were absorbed in their own little world. She had taken the time to push the Snail further for view, plus she had found a good hidden spot to keep an eye on them. Rey was never comfortable with other scavengers around, especially those she didn't recognize. Her association with Blobfish was enough to give the usual folk pause, but newcomers often acted over-confident and opportunistic, posing a very real threat. And even if they were aware of who she was and were doing business with Blobfish, they could tell him about the off-worlders she was transporting and endanger her in a different way.

If only they'd skipped the Whale entirely… Rey had always thought of the Whale as a safe place to sleep. There were always various groups around and all of them were joined by an air of comradery, so any violent transgressions were met with vicious retribution. Rey felt protected back then, and slept soundly. As the valuable scrap got harder to find, the groups slowly left and only the Whalers remained. Rey took on new challenges in the Dragon and the Hedgehog, so she hadn't even visited the Whale in over two years. All she heard of it was what Pogo Boys would talk about when they were loading off scrap. Presumably this group was from a different market, giving the Whalers access to more buyers.

Rey watched the partiers grow quieter and felt the exhaustion coming on. She started doubting her rush to panic, second-guessing her reasons for worry. If she didn't sleep, the next day would be a nightmare to get through, and she wouldn't maybe get a better chance in the next nine days. Even if they were found out, she could just lie and tell them she's showing them around. Yeah, that'd work. There weren't any tourists around these parts, but many visiting spacers were interested in seeing the inner workings of an imperial space craft. With that excuse ready, Rey left her vantage point for the night.

The Red Stripe was racing down the river, with Rey's mind racing and at the same time completely blank, no clear thought could penetrate her consciousness. She became a part of the machine for a moment, the dedicated driving intelligence. The river splashed her with water, but she was glad to be washed of the ashes which coated her radiator, clogged her controls and clumped her hair. She got a sense of relief as the horror washed away, and a sense of disgust as she started processing what she'd seen. By now she'd cleared the habitation, no ash or destruction in sight, just dirt and sand, plus the odd tree. Rey pulled up to one of them, wrapped herself in a blanket and cried herself to sleep.

She woke up to the sound of an air horn blast. It was the dead of night, and a familiar two-track transport was on its way towards her, flooding the area with light.


	4. Chapter 4 - Inquiry

**Chapter 4 – Inquiry**

Her mother gripped her wrist and dragged Rey between and over stacks and stacks of assorted junk, pulling her left and right, up and down. Rey cried out to her, but the only answer was a continuum of wheezing breath and determined footwork. Rey was tired, her wrist hurt, she felt like crying yet didn't have breath to do it; but they kept going, deeper and deeper into this maze, seemingly without end. And they never reached the end, as Rey's mother stopped to open a package compartment of a trashed vehicle buried under a number of other wrecks. She couldn't get her fingers in so she banged on the lid with her foot – _clang! _–, and it came loose. Rey was pulled and shoved into the compartment, and she saw a faceless young woman give her one last look, telling her "I'll be right back, Rey" and pulling down the lid – _clang!_ –, plunging her into darkness.

Rey was terrified of moving. She heard muffled shouts, hurried footsteps and shuffling, punctuated by – _clang!_ – dreadful loud bursts of noise that made Rey's compartment vibrate and shake. When the shaking stopped, she felt the whole stack on top of her swing back and forth, slower and slower, and then another – _clang!_ – burst of noise brought the whole thing down. Rey covered her ears as pieces of junk avalanched over her hiding place, turning it into a buried casket.

When the noises outside stopped for a while, Rey wanted desperately to get out. She pushed on the lid with her shoulder, but it wouldn't budge. She turned on her stomach and pushed with her back, no go. On her back, with her feet – wouldn't budge. Rey tried a dozen angles, but all she got out of it were bruises and a shortness of breath. Tears welled in her eyes, she banged on the lid with both of her hands and cried for help. She gave up. It was better to wait for her mother to return, like she had promised. Nobody else would know where to find her. So she stayed put, and waited. And waited.

The compartment was dark and tight, but it wasn't suffocating her. She could wriggle around a bit and switch sides when her one of her arms felt sore. It was just as comfortable as any other place Rey's parents had put her to sleep in, come to think of it. It was just a bit confined. Rey stared at the nothingness, content. Even as she grew and as she couldn't wriggle as much anymore, as she had to pull her knees up to her chest and lie on just one of her arms, she got used to it, she felt like she could spend a lifetime in here. _Clang!_

Rey was crammed below Slug's control panel with its levers, switches, knobs and the two control sticks. Usually she'd sleep in the back, but with guests she had to share her space with the driver's seat, which was really just a simple steel stool she had bolted to the floor. Crawling out, she saw Eg'saléd and Kent hunched over a portable monitor device, Kent speaking in a hushed tone and Egg pushing his translator right up to Kent's supposed ear with layers of cloth wrapped around it to dampen the loud, robotic voice he would otherwise have.

_Clang!_

It came from outside, supposedly the Whalers had begun work already. Kent waved Rey over to show her the monitor. It showed a monochrome picture of the hangar bay entrance, refreshing every five seconds or so. The vehicle was gone, but the camp was still set up and a few people remained. Kent croaked, "They aren't leaving."

Egg pressed his wrapped translator up to Rey's ear and the voice cut like a knife. WE MUST LEAVE. YOU MAKE US HIDE.

Rey shrugged. "Lay down and I'll cover you in your suitcases. If you don't move, they'll just think I'm overprepared. I need to go talk to them first though." Defensive postures. "We might not have enough water after all. I didn't consider your consumption rates."

Egg reached out again. I WAS DISAPPOINTED. GO IF NECESSARY.

Rey grabbed a knapsack and an empty canister, and walked out to the hangar bay. The separating doorframe had a flat rectangular device attached to it, buzzing quietly. _Clang!_ Rey saw two people in the camp, one laying on a sleeping mattress covering their face with their elbow, one sitting up on hers, looking down at her half-eaten meal, not sure whether to continue or not. Rey put her canister – _clang!_ – down in front of the second one and she jumped up, dropped her meal and got up near Rey's face. She gave her an intense look, but it was counteracted by her constant need to shift weight to keep balance. In a shot voice she creaked out the words: "Stop. Making. Noise." and fell back onto her sitting spot.

"I came to trade for water. Got a lead on a lost soul, might be a few days 'fore I get back. Fill this up, and I'll give you a pick of what I got in here." Rey jingled her knapsack, heavy with junk she charitably considered to be spare parts for Slug.

"Water! Brilliant!" The woman's lit up and she scampered up to where the camp's supplies were piled. She dragged a canister back to her mattress without ever standing up. "Good." She turned a tin cup laying on the ground upright and filled it, spilling more than went in. Then she thirstily gulped it all down and repeated the process.

"I need to get going soon. I might be out there an extra day if I start too late."

The woman leaned on the canister, looking for a moment like a protective parent and then like she's about to throw up. And then she threw up on the canister. Rey was debating whether to kick her off and take the prize by force or to go talk to the Whalers about getting water when the woman finally wiped off her mouth and spoke: "With that much water you could survive a week. Where are you going?"

"I'm looking for a lost soul, one of my friends triangulated the position of their last contact, but it's not accurate. I could find them tomorrow, in five days, never."

"Surely you prepared for your journey. You must have a second canister, a third. You have plenty! We have eight people, do you really think we have water to fill your near infinite thirst? Every drop is accounted for. Eve-ry-drop!"

"The water's not for me, it's for my transport. The radiator's getting on, it drinks twice as much as me. If I don't oblige it, it will leave me on the dunes. If I do, I get a bit parched." Rey rummaged in her bag. "I'll give you this balance rod for it. It's probably good for at least a few trips to the spring."

The water guardian looked hungrily at the balance rod, but didn't relent. "You're from Plutt's market, right? Go back to your swine of a boss and ask him how many trips to the spring his sheep can make with that puny little stick up their noses. No little trinket is going to convince me to hand over water to that self-serving merchant's lackey so they can take a tour of the corpses they left to grind to dust out in the middle of nothing and nowhere. And I know you think you're just a freelancer, but you literally eat out of the hand of that monarch. You depend on him, and you dance on his—"

"Laney, enough." The other person, a bulky man with wild hair, had gotten up and picked up a canister. "Just because she deals with Plutt doesn't mean they're on his side."

"Isn't on his side, Mar? He gets rich off their work, they bring him everything he needs to perpetuate his power plays. You only just got shot by one of his goons!" Laney shook her fist, red in the face.

Mar had a bit of a limp when he handed Rey the canister and took the balancing rod. "And that goon's ghost is now possessing this young lady? We should help fellow scavengers, whomever they sell to. We get along with the Boys, right? They deal with Plutt, and you don't give them shit."

"Oh, I will give them shit. I'll shit in a bucket and hand it right off once they get here. I'll even make sure to eat two portions worth of bean paste first."

Mar turned to Rey. "We'll keep your canister, you take ours. It's easier that way. We'll be here for a week so make sure to stop by when you return." Rey thanked him and turned to leave in a hurry. Mar and Laney kept trading blows at the camp. "Laney, if we don't treat other scavengers well, they won't treat us well. If we antagonize everybody, and Plutt says he's got a well-paying job for a blaster enthusiast, there will be a surge of blaster enthusiasm on Jakku, I guarantee you that."

"And I guarantee you that every drop this so-called scavenger pours into her radiator will mean another drop of blood spilled at the springs!"

Rey collected the device from the doorframe on her way back and told the others to get ready to move out. Eg'saléd had built a fort out of their luggage and Kent was trying to pull the flooring tarp over it. Rey helped them finish and the result was horrible. The flooring tarp definitely looked like it was concealing something. She decidedly ignored it and instead worked on starting the Slug up.

She flipped all the switches. Electric systems, pressure chambers, engine, all lit up. With a pull of a lever the Slug pushed itself off the ground, hovering at about free feet high. Another lever, and the propulsion engine started its clonking routine. Right stick for orientation. Left for thrust control. They crawled out of maintenance, through the hangar bay, past the still-arguing campers who paid them no mind and into the wide, wide open.

"Out here looking for another dead man?" Laney had her back to Rey, scraping clumped ashes out of Red Stripe's nooks and crannies with her finger. "Or looking to make another man dead?"

"I came to see the western village, we hadn't heard from them in over a month." Rey sitting with her back against the tree, clinging to her blanket.

Mar had a blaster trained on her. "Oh? And why do you think that is? Is there anyone on this planet stupid enough to keep trading with Unkar Plutt?"

Rey tried to make herself small, pressing herself against the tree and wrapping her blanket around her knees. She pressed her jaw against her chest to stop her teeth from clattering.

"Well, this one appears to be." Laney held up one of the portions from Blobfish. "And this is Plutt's joyride, he must really like you, girl." She came up to squat in front of Rey, a mean grin plastered on her face. "Or maybe you're smart after all, and you stole it."

Rey gave Laney a fierce and proud look. "I built it. I just asked Blobfish to give it back."

Laney threw her hands up and started cackling like a maniac. "How generous of him! He is such a noble soul, isn't he? Just giving away speeders he doesn't even own. Do you know what he uses this one for? You don't? He hears about someone wise enough to take their business elsewhere, and then he has one of his flock find out where they went, and the sheep will follow this person unfortunate enough to matter to good old uncle Plutt, and stalk them until they can get a tracker on them, and then – in comes an unaffiliated trouble-maker looking to make some trouble, and they just so happen to come across this person and they happen to find themselves on the worse half of a blaster shot. This sound familiar to you? Did he send you to put a tracker on the village head, or to put him down, huh?"

Rey buried her face into her thighs and concentrated on the warmth of the blanket and the sweet unjudgemental darkness it provided.


End file.
